BY PASTOR MARK LEE
Pastor Mark Lee of Vantage Point Church in Eastvale
As the temperatures decrease, the days become shorter, and the kids return to school, one thing becomes increasingly clear: summer is over.
For a brief period of time, many of us are excited to get back to our regular routines. We look forward to everything getting “back to normal” until the reality of “normal” kicks in. Suddenly, we find ourselves just as stressed as we were before summer began.
Did you know that the average office worker currently has approximately 36 hours of work piled on his or her desk? Or, that the average person now sleeps two hours less per night than they did 100 years ago? In fact, people are so busy these days that frozen juice sales have plummeted simply because nobody has the time to wait for it to defrost.
While stress is a part of life and many of us work best under pressure, problems arise when we allow it to get too intense or go on for too long. Being busy and under pressure negatively affects our health and damages relationships. However, reducing stress and improving your life is much more complicated than getting rid of a few obligations. The real key is identifying what it is that makes you push yourself so hard. Often, our desire to become someone better or be something more is what drives us to over commit.
1 Peter 5:6 says, “Humble yourselves under God’s mighty hand that he may lift you up in due time.” We need to shift our focus from what we wish we were to what God wants us to become. By handing over the control and allowing God to advance us in His time, we can achieve true happiness.
VantagePoint Church meets at Roosevelt High School on Sundays at 8:30, 10, and 11:30 a.m.
